New Jersey is, by name and by definition, the Garden State. Probably all other places in Jersey where I was not there are lots of flower gardens and immense and endless grasslands of immaculate lawns, but in the stretch from Newark to Bergen County, I saw only a messy and dilapidated collection of houses of all type, along with endless stretches of barren land and dry, those that when a few drops of rain become a vast swamp. Urban area adjacent to Manhattan I lived there last summer, and if I have to tell the truth, I do not feel totally missed. Heading north from Newark, Hudson County, Jersey City, Union City until you come to Bergen County, you are twenty-five miles and you seem to be in the same spot, all homes are equal, all Chicanos on the street or sitting on the steps of the house are the same, the JF Kennedy Boulevard is always equal to the Meadowlands. I decide to come back: a nice sunny afternoon I decided to do a reunion in the Garden State. You can get from Manhattan to Jersey City in three ways. By bus, leaving from Port Authority on 8th Avenue at Times Square, take bus 404 from platform 99 / s, making a trip of about half an hour. By subway, the subway special called Path, which runs from 33rd Street in Herald Square, which makes a handful of stops until you reach the terminus of Journal Square in Jersey. Or you can get there by ferry, with NY Waterway, starting dall'apposito marina in Battery Park in Lower Manhattan, across the Hudson River and arriving at Hoboken, Garden State, lively area full of nightclubs and pubs. After a summer spent on the Path or Port Authority to make the pendulum-like New York, this time I live in Manhattan I opt for the means of transport more attractive and relaxing, or ferry. The crossing is short, about twenty minutes and there are. From the port of Hoboken can be easily reached on foot (by a narrow dark slightly uphill and at night you should never take) on Paliside Avenue, one of the main streets of Jersey City, a parallel to the JF Kennedy Boulevard, which cuts across the lengthwise city, if so we call it. From the top of the hill we are about the same latitude as New York's Union Square, from there the view of the skyline of Manhattan is really impressive, the horizon is free, you see everything from Lower Manhattan to Central Park. The playground is right at the end of the uphill path that leads to the port of Hoboken Paliside Avenue intersection with Bowers Street, in the midst of a little park that looks nice and innocent, but at night it went really badly. When it gets dark because of the green rectangle on the edge of Paliside Avenue is filled with shady characters, stars of numerous fights and car accessories trades. The pitch looks as good as I remembered him, a concrete some shooting without nets and attended by Latinos very unfriendly. Luckily I am not entirely a newcomer, having played there throughout the summer always thinking, in fact when I come to play anyone remembers me. There is also a friend, my ex-neighbor, Mooch, an Iranian boy forced to flee the United States as a child with his family because persecuted by Khomeini's Islamic regime (his father was an adviser to the deposed Shah of Persia ). Anyway, it begins, now is the time when you play. After the soggy experience in Staten Island I had to restore with blazing afternoon in Battery Park and Harlem, where I managed to find the intensity and the desire to win that I was not able to find on the island happy. The Jersey Staten Island does not have anything, let alone the lack of intensity basketball that despite the poor technical and physical level, has nothing to envy to the most intense playground in Manhattan. An excessive amount, the tiger's eyes and nerves on edge throughout the first game, a four against four people slightly, despite my good performance in shooting, and characterized by continual skirmishes between Ritchie, slender African-American very similar to 1.85 to Dontrelle Willis (Florida Marlins pitcher), and one of our Puerto Rican opponent, big, really big and ugly, in all senses (with the retina in the head, Los Angeles-style). Ritchie is not afraid, after a couple of contacts prohibited throwing the feet of the opponent, and begins with the characteristic gesture in moving his arms and head inclination, to invite the opponent to fight with the classic "c 'mooon meeeee, call immediately collected by the Puerto Rican, barely restrained by his companions. Usually in these situations I'm not intruding NEVER to share, because what divides is always the champion of justice, the one with the most good intentions, that has nothing to do anything, as well as what he regularly takes to the first and most strong, then I'm away nicely, though the situation seems seems to have calmed down. But as I imagined, in the first action of the second game of the inevitable happens, or that the first part of the Puerto Rican contact with the cardboard Ritchie, beak full left ear, just inches from me, making him stagger. My companion responds promptly fell on his opponent, much bigger and more tattooed than he. The two are left bathrobe for fifteen seconds, until they fall to the ground clutching. At that moment the other involved a split in true hockey-style, declaring virtually ended the game, partly because some of the spirit is not the same.
Daniele Vecchi, Playground in New York
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